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BASEBALL; Williams Fits Script In House Ruth Built

The Yankees offered a tribute to Babe Ruth on the 50th anniversary of his death before yesterday's game with the Texas Rangers, eliciting respectful cheers from 50,304 fans at Yankee Stadium. The videotape described how important Ruth was to the Yankees, so renowned that he is credited, figuratively, with building the stadium.

Then Bernie Williams provided a real-life tribute by dramatically ending the game with a ninth-inning homer into the upper deck in right field off Xavier Hernandez, eliciting raucous cheers as the Yankees snatched a 6-5 victory from the Rangers.

It was a perfect tribute to Ruth, the Hall of Fame home run hitter. It was also a perfect ending to the game for the Yankees, and it showed that they can be less than perfect and still prevail. Even Ruth would adore this team.

''It was a good way to end the game,'' Williams said. ''It was very exciting. It's very coincidental it came up on that date. It's a great tribute to his memory. We didn't plan it that way, but it turned out great.''

Most days, everything turns out great for the Yankees. Even when David Wells, the ultimate Ruth fan who scrawled Ruth's No. 3 on the back of his baseball cap, was up in the strike zone and gave up three homers while laboring to last six innings. The Yankees survived behind Williams's four hits, part of a 17-hit barrage, and a dependable bullpen. And they eclipsed another major league record in the process.

By winning for the 90th time in 120 games, the Yankees became the fastest team to reach 90 victories, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The 1944 St. Louis Cardinals were also 90-30, but they had three ties that were not reflected in their record, so it actually took them 123 games to win 90. The Yankees stand by themselves.

''It does stagger me,'' Torre said. ''It's incredible to think of 90 wins by the middle of August. It's a heck of a bite. It's not that easy to do. So many things can go wrong.''

Yesterday proved that. The Yankees coasted to a 3-0 lead after two innings as Derek Jeter belted a two-run homer into the upper deck in right field in the first, the day's first Ruthian shot, and Darryl Strawberry pounded his team-best 22d homer into the right-field bleachers in the second.

Jeter offered tribute to Ruth with his shot, a 391-footer to the opposite field off Esteban Loaiza. Jeter had never even hit one there during batting practice.

''That's a long way,'' said Jeter, who extended his career-high homer total to 15. ''Babe Ruth must have been up there blowing it.''

Torre said: ''Guys who have played here and been here don't remember a right-hander hitting a ball there. When he got back to the dugout, he said, 'Wow.' ''

But Wells, who had pitched three straight complete games, did not have a strong repertory, and the lead vanished. He surrendered a two-run homer to Roberto Kelly in the third; a two-run shot to Royce Clayton in the fourth that faded into the right-field seats in foul territory and would have caused Ruth to smile, too; and another homer by Kelly in the fifth, which briefly gave the Rangers a 5-4 lead.

It was not a storybook outing for a pitcher who had a Babe Ruth book and a picture of the Bambino in his locker and who wanted the Yankees to avenge Saturday's 16-5 thrashing by Texas.

''You don't want to get beat that bad,'' said Wells, who allowed five earned runs and 10 hits as his earned run average against the Rangers this season ballooned to 12.46. ''We've put a hurt on teams like that this year, and the best thing is to come back and kick their behinds. That's embarrassing.''

After the Yankees tied the score, 5-5, on consecutive singles by Paul O'Neill and Williams and a double-play ground ball by Tino Martinez in the fifth, Ramiro Mendoza came on to pitch the seventh and eighth innings and throttle Texas.

The Yankees stranded two runners in the seventh inning and three during an agonizing eighth. The Rangers loaded the bases with two out in the top of the ninth against Mariano Rivera, but Will Clark cued a soft liner that Jeter neatly fielded on a short hop, throwing to first for the out.

Hernandez, a former Yankee, started the ninth by striking out O'Neill and then made Williams's swing look sick with a nasty split-finger fastball. But Hernandez threw Williams an inside fastball on the 0-1 count and Williams's bat suddenly looked healthier. With one swift, compact swing, Williams sent the baseball rocketing into Ruth's territory for his 18th homer, and allowed the Yankees to take three of four from a team they might see again in October. It was his first game-winning homer since Game 1 of the 1996 league championship series off Baltimore's Randy Myers.

''Anything he does really doesn't surprise me because he has the ability to do it from both sides of the plate,'' Torre said. ''You half expect him to hit a homer when he's up there.''

Williams was embraced at the plate by 24 teammates. He looked relieved as he flipped his helmet and his shin guard aside. As chants of ''Bernie, Bernie'' reverberated around the stadium, Martinez shoved Williams out of the dugout to accept the adulation. Williams, no Ruth when it comes to lapping up attention, returned safely to the dugout after one sheepish wave.

''It's what baseball is all about,'' Williams said. ''Are you kidding me? People have dreams of doing things like this.''